Critics of a speaker widely viewed as one of the nation’s most prominent deniers of the Holocaust say they will counter his talk in Eugene on Friday with a competing event and a later symposium.

Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, will speak on “The Israel Lobby.” His visit comes at the invitation of the Pacifica Forum, a local discussion group founded by retired University of Oregon professor Orval Etter.

Weber, a historian who grew up in Portland, describes himself as a Holocaust revisionist. But detractors point to Weber’s own writings in labeling him a white supremacist, racist and anti-Semite.

“People may think I’m wrong or I’m right, but they should have a chance to hear what I have to say,” Weber said in a telephone interview from his institute’s office in Newport Beach, Calif.

Local critics affiliated with Community Alliance of Lane County have scheduled a free speech vigil to be held just outside the UO hall where Weber will speak. “We are operating under the theory that the best response to hate speech is more speech,” volunteer Michael Williams said. “We want an opportunity for the community to show its opposition to the kinds of things that Mark Weber stands for.”

Williams said opponents don’t plan to shout slogans or prevent people from hearing Weber’s talk. “We will have a presence that is unavoidable but not obstructionist.”

David Frank, a professor in the Honors College at the UO, said he and two faculty members are planning a Holocaust symposium in response to Weber’s talk.

Weber “has the right to come to campus and make preposterous statements,” Frank said. “But we have a responsibility as scholars to demonstrate the expertise and research that shows his claims are not only false but dangerous.”

Weber’s speech is not the first to draw charges of anti-Semitism against the Pacifica Forum, which last year sponsored multiple talks by Valdas Anelauskas, a resident of Eugene and native of Lithuania who describes himself as a journalist, researcher and “white separatist and racialist.” Anelauskas dedicated one of his lectures to a Holocaust denier.

Weber’s institute “has been battling Israel and the Jews for a long time,” Etter said. “They sort of lead the parade against those who say any extensive criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.”

Etter said he welcomes the controversy sparked by Weber’s appearance because it will “improve understanding in this community about what’s been going on for a long time in regard to Israel and the Israeli lobby .... This will be another pinnacle of free speech.”

Why exactly does Weber have the right to speak on campus? He has the right to speak on a soapbox in a park; he has the right to create a website or radio show to air his hate. But why, exactly, does a college have the obligation to host racists?

Because of this:

The forum has access to UO space because he and forum colleague George Beres are former UO employees, Etter said.

We'll see if the KKK can find a former UO employee to sponsor them as well and give them some more legitimacy.

Hizbullah has succeeded in rearming itself and has obtained missiles with a range of 250 km., a UN report on the implementation of UN Resolution 1701 stated. Such missiles would be capable of striking areas south of Tel Aviv.

Weapons smuggling from Syria into Lebanon, in violation of 1701, is continuing as well.

According to the report, which was quoted by Army Radio, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called the continued arms smuggling "grave."

The report also noted that according to information provided by Israel, Hizbullah was rearming itself south of the Litani River, and that given this development, UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese army were increasing their efforts to patrol the area.

Further, Israeli intelligence passed on to the UN stated that the number of land-to-sea missiles in Hizbullah's stockpile has tripled.

So the new, improved UNIFIL managed to let Hezbollah do pretty much all it wanted to, and now it is a bigger threat than it was last summer. Resolution 1701 is yet another worthless piece of paper generated by that august institution.

By Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf NewsPublished: October 29, 2007, 23:51

President George W. Bush's approval ratings may be in the doldrums and he's only got just over another year to go, but before we order the celebratory fireworks here's a thought. The next American president could make this one look like a boy scout.

As the months pass, the next election looks like a race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani for the Republicans. I'm no fan of the coolly calculating Clinton but given the alternative, she's the one I'll be rooting for.

...Here's the problem. Whereas post 9-11 Giuliani was generally considered a competent, nice-guy keen to roll up his sleeves in order to put his city to rights, in recent months the mask has come off. In short, Giuliani is no benign patriotic do-gooder. He's a hawkish, sabre-rattling, pro-Israel, nationalistic neocon.

A clue to Giuliani's leanings emerged during the visit of Prince Al Walid Bin Talal to Ground Zero in October 2001. Bearing a $10 million donation for disaster relief, the Saudi prince suggested the US reexamine its Middle East policies and adopt a balanced stance towards Palestinian aspirations. Giuliani's response was to hand back the cheque.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards has joked President Giuliani would be like President Bush on steroids. Unfortunately, this is no joke.

Giuliani makes no bones about the fact he would use military force to set-back Iran's nuclear programme. In September, he promised to use America's military might to prevent Iran pursuing its nuclear ambitions should he be elected president.

His senior foreign policy adviser Norman Podhoretz has spelled out this message, advising that Iran be bombed with cruise missiles and bunker busters. "None of the alternatives to military action - negotiations, sanctions, provoking an internal insurrection - can possibly work," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Giuliani is talking tough when it comes to Pakistan, too. He recently urged the president to be more aggressive in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden within Pakistan even if such a move would result in alienating the Pakistani government.

On Iraq, Giuliani has been consistently gung ho. He supported the war from the outset, backed the so-called surge and believes American troops should stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

And if my worst fears are realised and Giuliani moves into the White House there will be no Palestinian state for the foreseeable future either. He has declared in no uncertain terms his antipathy towards a two-state solution because a Palestinian entity would "support terrorism" and threaten US security.

It's also worth recalling that in 1995, he banned the former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat from attending events held in New York to celebrate the UN's 50th anniversary and ordered his removal from a concert held at the Lincoln Centre. It's not surprising that a panel of eight Israeli experts assembled by the daily Ha'aretz determined Giuliani is the best presidential candidate for Israel.

A recent article on the front page of the New York Times titled "Mid-east hawks help to develop Giuliani's policy" enlightens us as to the former mayor's new best friends. "Mr Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers," the article reads.

His team, says the article, includes "Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran as soon as it is logically possible; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinising American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin who has written in favour of revoking the United States' ban on assassination".

Giuliani recently took the Democrats to task for avoiding use of the term "Islamic terrorism" during four debates; an omission he describes as taking political correctness to extremes.

A Giuliani presidential tenure would also be extremely bad news for Americans who value the few civil liberties they have left. He strongly backs the controversial Patriot Act; is an advocate for wire-tapping and domestic spying, and isn't sure whether "water-boarding" or sleep deprivation should be considered as "torture".

He has also promised to appoint "strict constructionist" judges to the Supreme Court to allay the fears of conservative Republicans and the religious right that he is pro-abortion.

The Gulf News has put all of the best things about Rudy Giuliani in a single article (even though it was exaggerating a bit.) And judging from the comments that the article received, it appears that other readers agree:

Your description of Giuliani's attributes has just converted me into a voter for Giuliani. I was teetering about who to support, but your article has shown me the light. It has highlighted all the positive attributes required of the next president.From a readerPleasanton,USAPosted: October 30, 2007, 05:52

Are you actively trying to win Giuliani the nomination? I don't support Giuliani as the nominee. He is not conservative enough.DaveMinneapolis,USAPosted: October 30, 2007, 05:47

I don't know women who are set to vote for Hillary. Even I will vote for Rudy over Clinton if they were the only two choices. Clinton has no principles at all.RachelCalifornia,USAPosted: October 30, 2007, 05:31

President Bush has proposed a sixfold increase in aid to the Palestinians, including $150 million in direct cash transfers to the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to bolster the government in advance of a Middle East peace conference planned for later this month in Annapolis.

The $435 million in additional aid, on top of $77 million requested earlier this year, has attracted little notice in the president's $45.9 billion supplemental request last week to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if approved, it would constitute the administration's largest amount of direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. Previously, the administration had limited cash transfers to $50 million at a time.

Let's get a quick timeline together:

* US gives some $70 million annually to the moderate terrorists of the PA, including weapons and training for their security forces to keep out the extremist terrorists.* The extremist terrorists win an election and take over the government.* The US and EU balk at this new Hamas government so Abbas is installed as a figurehead president to receive more money.* Hamas goes to war with the moderate terrorists, with all their US-supplied weapons and training. Fatah runs away from Gaza with barely a skirmish.* The US and EU decide to reward the moderate terrorists by allowing them to form an undemocratic government and ignoring Gaza - and they pressure Israel to give this government a couple of hundred million dollars.* Moderate terrorists continue terrorizing, with suicide attacks thwarted by Israel, with press restrictions, with continued incitement against Israel on moderate terrorist TV.* Now the US decides that the reason that the moderate terrorists lost the the extremists is not because they have no motivation, not because they have no desire for peace with Israel, not because Fatah in reality only controls a small area around Ramallah while Hamas is more popular everywhere else - the real reason is because the US didn't give Fatah enough money to begin with.

As the expression goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. The US has zero influence on Palestinian Arabs in any meaningful way - in fact, all evidence points to the fact that they hate the US with a passion. Whomever the US supports will actually automatically lose prestige in the Arab world. The only thing the US has is money, and it therefore thinks that money can solve all problems.

For thirty years the US has singlehandedly propped up the Egyptian government with tens of billions of dollars to influence Egypt to adhere to its peace treaty with Israel. This may have brought a temporary end to war but it has hardly brought peace - Egyptians remain the most anti-semitic and misozionistic people on the planet. The idea of normalizing relations with Egypt, so sought after by Israel in the 1970s, is laughable today. Egypt is a single bullet away from being taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. Three decades of "peace" has not moderated the Egyptian people one bit. The only reason there is not a state of war now is because a series of autocratic rulers have worked to ensure that the money pipeline remains open.

This is hardly a model for Israel-Palestinian Arab peace. Gaza, Al Aqsa Brigades, a weak non-democratic government - all these show that any money the US gives to Mahmoud Abbas will end up going to the terrorists, one way or another, and will impede peace rather than promote it.

Last September, CAMERA came out with a report showing an amazing correlation between the amount that Palestinian Arabs receive and the number of murders they do the following year:

The idea that the US can solve this problem with money is not only wrong, it is exactly the opposite - if the US wants to increase terror, the surest way is by increasing "aid".

Some 13 or so Arabs of Palestinian descent, who have lived in Iraq for decades, apparently were trying to illegally immigrate to Italy when their boat capsized, killing them.

BADIL, a PalArab organization that purports to help these Iraqi refugees in the guise of calling them Palestinian refugees, made this statement in response:

BADIL calls upon states, the PLO, UNHCR, UNRWA and NGOs working for Palestinian refugees to:

1) Provide Palestinian refugees in and from Iraq with temporary protection and/or relocation opportunities, especially in Yemen which has indicated its willingness to welcome the refugees;

2) Inform, consult and respect the wishes of the refugees;

3) Request Israel to permit the immediate return of Palestinian refugees from Iraq to their homes of origin and redouble efforts for durable solutions;

4) Ensure that any from of protection recognizes, respects and protects the right of return of Palestinian refugees, for example through registration with UNRWA of entitled but previously unregistered persons.

Notice anything strange?

That's right - the leading organization that pretends to help Palestinian Arabs refuses to ask Arab countries, or any others for that matter, to allow them to become naturalized citizens.

This is not an oversight. All of these organizations that pretend to support "human rights" for PalArabs have a larger agenda that trumps helping them: keeping them stateless and miserable indefinitely in the name of "the right of return."

The fear that these supposed advocates have is obvious: Palestinian Arabs will stop identifying as such in a generation or two if they are allowed to become re-integrated with the larger Arab world as they were before 1948. The most effective weapon that the Arab world has against Israel's existence would disappear as the "refugees" disappear.

So we see yet again that "Palestinian human rights" organizations care more about destroying Israel than about human rights. It is right here in black and white.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

A Lebanese TV station that is apparently associated with Syria has aired some quite interesting programming, based on my own "Protocols." Every single anti-semitic slander finds its way into this slick production, complete with lots of video of Jews praying at the Kotel.

TV Channel Affiliated with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Beri in a Show Dedicated to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Jews Use Drug Trafficking to Take Control of the World and Subjugate Other Nations

Following are excerpts from a Lebanese TV report on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The report aired on NBN TV on October 22, 2007.

Maria Maalouf: On land and in the heavens - the use that American and Israeli Zionism makes of the weapon of drugs in order to thwart intifadas and revolutions cannot be justified by the American claims about the intensification of the struggle on land, as long as the Jews purport to have their own private god in the heavens, who commanded them to annihilate the nations and peoples of the world, using drugs and causing anxiety, and numbing the mental, psychological, and physical capabilities of non-Jews, as written in the Talmud or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Isn't it true that these Jewish plots to corrupt the peoples were described by American "plot-disrupters," such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford, and even by some Jews, like Alfred Lilienthal, and even Karl Marx, who, more than 150 years ago, exposed in his book On the Jewish Question that there was an instinct within the Jewish individual that drives him to take control of the world, by means of illegal money – which is known today as "money laundering."

[...]

Narrator: The Koran said about them: "They strive to spread corruption throughout the land." Spreading the corruption throughout the land is the declared goal of the Zionist hands of evil, which are infiltrating the world. The Zionists have summarized their destructive principles in what has become known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which contains their secret plan to subjugate the entire world by spreading chaos and promiscuity among the nations, by imposing corrupt and depraved ideologies on human minds, and by destroying the foundations of religion, nationalism, and morality. Since the occupation of Palestine, the Zionist policy has supported and spread drug abuse in the holy lands, and has acted to get rid of the legal procedures meant to prevent this, and refrain from prosecuting drug dealers and traffickers. The Israeli prison authorities turn a blind eye to smuggling, and even facilitate drug abuse among the Arab detainees, and they clamp down upon Palestinian NGOs trying to curb drug abuse.

In addition to the provoking of civil strife and to the poisoning of minds, the Jews have turned to physical poisoning. They became known in history for poisoning wells. They are also known for adding certain amounts of harmful substances to medicine and alcoholic beverages, as well as to flour and its products, and to other products that the Jews export – directly and indirectly – to unfriendly peoples, if not to all peoples. Drugs were the Jews' method of wearing down the German people, which led to the Nazi extremism, in which the Jews themselves played a role. In addition, they carried out widespread drug dealing in Czarist Russia since the 17th century. This was in accordance with the Jewish Talmud, which says that the Jews must devote their greatest efforts to prevent other nations from ruling the land, so that the rule would be in the hands of the Jews alone.

In The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the end justifies the means, and when the forces of society are in a state of disarray, the power of the Jews is stronger than that of anyone else. Moreover, the ninth Zionist protocol states in a banal way that any revolution against the Jews must be made [as futile as] a dog barking at an elephant. The third Zionist protocol states that other nations must be left sick, poor, and lacking any determination or strength. Naturally, drugs are the most effective means to accomplish this goal.

The American thinker Benjamin Franklin, in his famous 1789 manifesto, the American industrialist Henry Ford, who wrote The International Jew, and others like them warned of the danger posed by the Jews, who destroy morals. In an indirect reference to drugs, Franklin said about [the Jews]: "They destroy morale in any land they settle." He described them as "bats" and "blood-suckers," and said that if they are not kept away from the children of America, these children – according to Franklin – would end up as workers in fields for the feeding of the Jews.

[...]

Maria Maalouf: I have a final question about what is written in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: "The Jews are entitled to treat the other peoples as animals, to corrupt them, to tear countries apart, to destroy the other nationalities, and to spread promiscuity and chaos." Some believe that the spreading of drugs is one of their means of taking control of non-Jewish peoples.

Hussein Al-Kheishan: I believe this is true, we must consider our responsibility – what we should do to overcome this plague, which is killing our society.

Anyone who thinks that Nazi-style Jew-hatred no longer exists today is deluded. And it is not just being spread in tiny underground newspapers or obscure websites, but it is being broadcast in slick packages on TV throughout the Arab world.

[Abbas] told the [Al-Sharq Al-Awsat] news agency that he will not give any concessions in the Annapolis peace conference, he added.

Abbas called on the Arab countries to avoid taking any steps towards normalization with Israel before they withdraw from all the Palestinian territories they occupied in 1967, and before a just solution for the refugee problem is found on the basis of UN resolution 194.

Regarding Hamas' position towards the Annapolis conference, Abbas said "It is the Palestinian Liberation Organisation that takes part in the conference not the government or the Palestinian Legislative Council."

Combining this with Ahmed Qureia's statements earlier we see that Abbas is not even pretending to represent the Palestinian Arab people at Annapolis - but even so, he might refuse to go unless Israel offers everything up front.

He will use the fiction of only representing the PLO to avoid any Western pressure, claiming that he cannot commit to any concessions (and officially giving Hamas veto power) but he still turns around and asks Israel to agree to give everything to this admittedly non-representative group.

And, meanwhile, instead of encouraging peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors - the same level of "peace" that Israel has with the PA, meaning official mutual recognition - he is advocating remaining in a state of war.

The chief Palestinian peace negotiator threatened on Tuesday that there would be no talks with Israel unless a deadline is set for establishing a Palestinian state — the first indication the Palestinians could scuttle a U.S.-sponsored peace summit over the issue.

Reading between the lines, Ahmed Qureia is saying that their statehood is not in the least bit dependent on their actions. Israel can ask for security guarantees or anything else and the PalArabs might pretend to agree or not, but no matter what there will be a state by some future date.

It is like a juvenile delinquent telling his parents that he demands a new car on his sixteenth birthday regardless of whether he gets good grades, stays in school, goes to prison - it all doesn't matter because he deserves it. And if he doesn't get it, well, he will make life miserable for everybody.

And the world that has spoiled this kid rotten from day one - the world that has given billions of dollars in free food, free education and willful ignorance of the kid's crimes, the world that has taken the kid's side whenever he got into a fight and that bailed him out every time he got into trouble - that world is falling all over itself to buy a Ferrari.

I try to dig up news that others have missed, but this is still not an excuse for the professional journalists to ignore stories that are available and are clearly newsworthy. Here is a round-up of recent postings I wrote that completely flew under the MSM radar, judging from mentions in Google News:

"Kill Jews Everywhere" - Although I got this out of the English-language Ma'an newspaper, and Arutz-7 put it into a newsbrief, this story where Hamas/PRC terrorists threatened Jews worldwide is nonexistent on Google News.

More Holy Temple Denial, where the former Mufti of Jerusalem denied that there was ever a Jewish Temple at the site of the Temple Mount, was only mentioned in a couple of Israeli newspapers and a simgle mention in EarthTimes (UK). EarthTimes credits UPI but the absence of this story from the thousands of newspapers indexed by Google means that every single one did not think that this story was worth mentioning.

Saudi king insults everyone's intelligence in Britain, where the Saudi king speaks hypocritically about "human rights" and says many other outrageous things about Israel, women and terrorism, was only mentioned by Arab News and Bits and Pieces. Even the BBC did not seem to put its own interview on the web, in either transcript or full video form.

This is only from the past week.

The mainstream media has no interest in looking for real stories - they are mindlessly following the lead from wire services and a couple of influential newspapers, whose agendas clearly do not include stories such as these. When it comes to the Middle East or anti-semitism they have already decided what they want to think and these items - which upset the applecart of complacency that the "even-handedness" coverage encourages - just do not fit into the story they want to say.

Saudi King Abdullah spoke to the BBC before his trip to Britain and made some amazingly hypocritical statements. Of course, the Beeb couldn't be expected to call him on them, as the formerly great kingdom submits to the current Kingdom, its largest trading partner. (The transcript in not online, but a small part of the video is.)

“We don’t want concessions. We are people with rights and we demand our rights,” the king told the BBC when asked whether he expected any Israeli concessions in order to reach a Middle East peace settlement....

Speaking about the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference, the king said he believed that the conference would fail unless the Palestinians’ needs were taken more seriously. He emphasized the return of Palestinian refugees to their country. “This is a humanitarian condition for peace.”

Too bad the interviewer was too ignorant to point out that it is a wee bit hypocritical for Abdullah to whine about Palestinian Arab rights when the Kingdom itself refuses to give citizenship to Palestinian Arabs, even as hundreds of thousands have helped build his country. It is truly bigotry.

And even so, he pretends to identify with them saying not that Palestinian Arabs have rights, but "we are people with rights." For all the incessant whining that the US and Europe aren't "evenhanded" when it comes to the Middle East, this basic standard is completely thrown out the window by his own words as he sheds even the pretext of objectivity on this issue.

Not to mention that to hear the Saudi king talk about "rights" from one of the most repressive regimes on Earth should cause anyone overhearing to vomit on the spot.

His insulting words didn't end here, though:

In the BBC interview, King Abdullah said it would take 20 to 30 years to defeat terrorism. “My advice to all countries including Britain is that they should not show any leniency in fighting terrorism,” he said. The king also revealed the recent arrest of some terror financiers in the Kingdom and said Al-Qaeda continued to be a big problem for Saudi Arabia.

...The BBC also reported that King Abdullah is annoyed that the rest of the world has largely failed to act on his proposal to establish an international counterterrorism center. “Everybody has accepted the proposal but then did nothing to implement it,” the king said.

“This center, under the umbrella of the United Nations, will collect information related to terrorism. We have learned from our experience that the speedy dispatch of information is the main factor in combating terrorism,” he explained.

...King Abdullah also said that Saudi Arabia had provided intelligence information to British authorities about a possible terrorist attack in the UK. “We sent information to Great Britain before the terrorist attacks in Britain, but unfortunately no action was taken and you know what happened,” the king said about the deadly July 7, 2005 bombings.

One British newspaper, Bits of News, described the reaction to this last statement as "Whitehall officials have been almost as quick to offer embarrassed, low-key denials as government ministers have been to placate the King with sycophantic, simpering, clichéd words promising friendship and cooperation."

Notice also the outlines of Abdullah's proposal for a "counterterrorism" center. Under UN auspices, it would ensure that Islamic terror would be downplayed and nothing would be able to impede the spread of Saudi Wahhabi Islam that has inspired so many jihadists.

Then, with a straight face, Abdullah continued:

“Islam has given the most rights to women in the world and they are strong and important participants in our society,” he said when asked about the condition of women in Saudi Arabia.

Coming from a country where women are not allowed to drive, where they cannot testify in court, where they cannot vote and where they make up a tiny percentage of the workforce, this is a statement that an ordinary journalist would have demolished.

But the obnoxious King can say such absurd things with impunity, because his wealth and control over worldwide energy resources burnish the fiction that he is an ally in the war on terror, rather than the enemy.

Abdullah came to the UK with an entourage of 400 people, on four planes, taking 84 limousines from the airport. He personally gets rich off of Western petrodollars and uses his wealth skillfully to keep the West in permanent submission to his will. Saudi influence in First World governments far outweighs the fabled "Israel lobby".

This rush to placate the Kingdom in its most wretched hypocritical glory is disgusting. But it will continue as long as we keep having to buy oil.

The house of my brother and my neighbor [2X]Do not be angry, oh mother, we got more stones [2X]We are Palestinians, we are not terrorists [2X]

"We have the right, oh mother, we want to bring our home backHand in hand, and arm in arm, we will protect your land, PalestineWe will pray in Al-Aqsa and the [Church] of the Nativity, Islam and Christians[2X]

"We will liberate [Palestine] the Land of Religions.And we will build Jerusalem of the homelands.We are the sons of glory, oh mother....

"We are Palestinians we are not terroristsWe are the students of freedom we are not terrorists

"Oh Arab, oh noble son, your blood is in my blood and your business is my businessPeace will be achieved through unity, oh my brother and cousinThe land is Arab in history and identityPalestine is Arab in history and identityWe will live in peace, oh mother, and our lives will not be wasted"Oh mother, they destroyed our houseThe house of my brother and my neighbor [2X]Do not be angry, oh mother, our rocks increased [in number]

"From Jerusalem and Acre, from Haifa and Jericho and Gaza and Ramallah [2X]From Bethlehem and Jaffa, from Be’er Sheva and Ramla, [2X]from Nablus to the Galilee, from Tiberias to Hebron." [2x]

So the Palestinian Arab concept of "peace" is where there are no Jews in the land of Israel, only Palestinian Arab Muslims and Christians. The "land of religions" only includes two religions, in this very "peaceful" song that broadly implies a Judenrein Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.

A Palestinian traffic police officer affiliated to the de facto Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip died on Monday as a result of the misuse of his weapon.

Palestinian police in Gaza issued a statement naming the deceased as twenty-three-year-old Safwat Abu Al-Naja from Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Which brings my 2007 PalArab self-death count to 566.

Meanwhile, the 80,000 PalArab policemen are being threatened by PM Fayyad, who says that he will slash their numbers by 30,000 (which still means that there will be some 20,000 more of them than allowed according to a 1995 agreement with Israel.)

Under pressure from the US and EU, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayad recently agreed to reduce the number of policemen in the West Bank by half.

Previous attempts by the PA leadership to lay off thousands of policemen were called off for fear of a mutiny inside the Palestinian security services.

According to the new PA plan, all policemen over the age of 45 would be forced into retirement. In addition, thousands of men and women whose names appear on the payroll of the security forces but don't do any work would be fired immediately.

Only in the Western-financed welfare state of the PA would the idea of firing people who do nothing be controversial. Of course, if their salaries would be paid by PalArab taxes rather than EU and American handouts, this opinion might change.

The "moderate" Arab country of Bahrain routinely goes crazy whenever there is a whiff of Zionists (or Jews) in the air. From the October 12 Gulf Daily News:

BAHRAIN has denied claims that Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa acted against the conscience of Bahrainis, Arabs and Muslims by holding an unofficial meeting with his Israeli counterpart Tzipora Livni. MPs have condemned the minister for the meeting, which happened while both were attended a summit at the UN in New York last week.

Members of the opposition Al Wefaq parliamentary bloc are drafting a new law that would ban any normalisation of relations with Israel and include tough penalties for anyone who broke it.

Some have also threatened to push for the reopening of an Israel Products Boycott Office, which was closed according to terms in the US-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement.

MP Jalal Fairooz alleged that American Jewish groups were infiltrating Bahrain and demanded an explanation from the minister, saying he could face questioning in parliament if he does not make clear what happened.

The Foreign Ministry has confirmed that the meeting took place, but says it was within Bahrain's role in the Middle East peace process.

...The news was taken from Israeli daily Haaretz, which reportedly claimed that Bahrain held political meetings with Israel in the 1990s, along with Oman and Qatar.

It also said that Israel's former foreign minister Yossi Sarees headed a delegation to Manama 12 years ago to meet Bahraini officials on environmental issues.

Al Akhbar added that Livni had already met former UN General Assembly president Shaikha Haya bint Rashid Al Khalifa, according to Haaretz.

A CALL to stop any normalisation of relations with Israel went out from angry MPs yesterday.

They demanded that the government immediately break any contact with the Zionists, saying it was hurting the feelings of Bahrainis.

The urgent proposal will now be studied by parliament's foreign affairs, defence and national security committee in co-ordination with the temporary Palestinian Support Committee.

The proposal was drafted by a cross-section of MPs, who said that tough measures should be taken to ensure that there are no meetings with Israelis, in line with Amiri Decree Number 15, issued in 1955. The MPs are parliament's first vice-chairman Ghanim Al Buainain, Al Wefaq bloc president Shaikh Ali Salman, parliament legislative and legal affairs committee vice-chairman Shaikh Jassim Al Saeedi, Nasser Al Fadhala and Hassan Al Dossary.

They also called for the immediate reopening of the Israel Products Boycott Office, which was closed under the US-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

"Bahrain's laws ban any type of normalisation and what's really annoying is that the meeting was held without anyone being informed about it, the government or even us, the people's representatives."

"We want MPs to prepare a report on what they want to do now on the issue to ensure that no other official follows his footsteps.

"The Israel Products Boycott Office should also be reopened to ensure that the Zionists' products don't enter our country in any way possible, because the moment one product enters the market, others would follow."

ANTI-ISRAEL activists are calling for a wider public involvement in their campaign against normalisation with the "Zionists".

A meeting is being held today by the Bahrain Society Against Normalisation with the Zionist Enemy, Adliya, at 8pm, where a host of non-governmental organisations and MPs have been invited.

They will discuss steps to be taken following the Foreign Minister's unofficial meeting with his Israeli counterpart in New York earlier this month.

The society maintains that Bahrain should not have any interaction with anyone in Israel at any level.

"We are expecting a large number of people to attend this meeting where we will suggest presenting a number of letters to the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Arab League to denounce the move," said society secretary Abdulla Abdulmalik.

"The meeting will also discuss an incident that took place in a private school where students were asked to colour the Zionist regime's flag."

I am dying to know details about this flag incident, but cannot find it anywhere. My guess is that some Bahraini school got a hold of an International Flags coloring book and didn't censor it properly.

I think that if someone would spread a rumor that Bahraini toilets use a modern Israeli flushing mechanism then you will see a huge new market in outhouses.

The top negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), warned on Sunday that the region would suffer greatly in the event that the upcoming Annapolis peace conference failed.

"If the summit fails – frustration will win out over everything else and it will have a negative affect on the region. I cannot predict exactly what will happen, but it may lead to more wars.

"I warn now against failure there, which will open the door for extremists and extremism – and that door will be very difficult to close," said Qureia at a conference held by Meretz activists.

Oh, he can predict precisely what will happen all right - if past history is any guide, Fatah is planning the newest intifada phase right now in anticipation of a summit that doesn't accede to all of their demands, just as they did in 2000.

Notice also the usual Arab subtext that they cannot control their "street." This excuse has been used for decades, but for some reason they manage to control their people quite fine - and brutally - when they go against the wishes of whatever regime they are in. It is only when they want to do something that the Arab regimes agree with that they turn into such a "threat."

I have previously described this as "the diplomacy of fear," a well-used part of the Arab negotiating lexicon. It is quite effective so there is no reason for Arabs and Muslims to stop using it.

Starting in September, 1947, a devastating cholera epidemic tore through Egypt. By the time it was done some 20,000 Egyptians were killed.

Neighboring Palestinian Jews followed the story closely, with daily Palestine Post articles like this one:

Soon after the outbreak, in late September, Hebrew University offered to help Egypt, saying that it could manufacture tens of thousands of vaccines immediately and, with help, millions within 4-6 weeks. Had Egypt taken this offer they could have turned the tide by early November.

Hadassah Hospital also formally offered to help the Egyptians.

But, of course, Egypt couldn't handle the indignity of being helped by lowly Jews:

In December, rumors started circulating in Egypt - not that the Jews offered to help stop the epidemic but that they had caused it by poisoning the water supply! In 1948, the Arab Higher Committee formally complained to the UN that the Jews were behind the epidemic

As recently as 2003, Egypt's Al Ahram Weekly has repeated the charges that Jews were responsible for the cholera epidemic, not only in Egypt but the smaller outbreak in Syria that started in December, 1947 (along with a host of other supposed crimes involving WMD.) "Evidence" cited is that the Syrians affected were near the Palestine border - while ignoring the fact that the Arab armies were coordinating to attack at borders of Palestine in that time period.

A few days ago was the anniversary of the death of Fathi Shikaki, a master terrorist who co-founded Islamic Jihad. To celebrate, there was a massive rally in Gaza calling on fighting Israel, where Shikaki's successor said, "Palestine was usurped at the hands of the armed Jewish groups by force, and, therefore, it couldn’t be retrieved but by force and resistance....We should not allow ourselves to believe, even for a moment, that our struggle with Israel has come to an end...This conference is dangerous for the Palestinians, because its aim is to drag Arab countries into normalizing their ties with Israel, define its borders, and allow the US to attack Iran. The Palestinians must not participate in this conference."

You might think that these is only the rantings of a single, small terror group, and not representative of the larger PalArab population.

But not only was Islamic Jihad there, but also Hamas leader Islaml Haniyeh, who said, days after fatal clashes between Hamas and Islamic Jihad,"Our relation with Islamic Jihad is strategic, stable and will not be shaken with a few events."

You might think that these sentiments are only endemic throughout Gaza, but not in the more secular, peaceful West Bank. But at Bir Zeit University, where the future leaders of Palestinian Arab society are molded, they also had a celebration of Shakaki's death (autotranslated):

Bir Zeit University students in 12th anniversary of the departure of Dr. Fathi Shakaki affirmed that the resistance and the certificate is correct and proper way, the only solution is to liberate the land of the blessed impurity Zionists rapists.

The Council called in a statement all the resistance factions and cards to escalate the resistance and strike the Zionist occupier everything Ottey force.

The provost of Teachers College told students Friday that two faculty members received an anti-Semitic cartoon and anti-Zionist letters. School officials have not released the names of the two professors.

Police say the hate crimes unit is aware of the incident.

I only saw one other mention of these incidents, as an aside in an article in the New York Post about a different subject.

A powerful explosion went off in a house in southern Gaza on Saturday, killing two women and a four-year-old girl, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.

The cause of the blast in the town of Khan Yunis was not immediately clear.

The blast tore down the facade of the house and badly damaged its interior. A neighboring house was also partially damaged from the force of the blast.

The IDF said it was not carrying out any operations in the area at the time.

Hamas police said they suspected explosives being handled by militants went off prematurely.

Our 2007 count of Palestinian Arabs being violently killed by each other now climbs to 564.UPDATE: From both Arab sources and YNet it looks like it was two children and an adult woman.UPDATE 1A: PCHR says 2 18-year old women and one child, so I'm going with that.UPDATE 2: Hamas blames Israel even though pretty much everyone knows that's BS.UPDATE 3: Hamas member killed in Rafah by "unknown gunmen."565.

Friday, October 26, 2007

A modern Orthodox rabbi from Los Angeles has published an essay in the Jewish Journal saying his reasons why Jerusalem should be negotiated. In order not to take any of his comments out of context I will print the entire article here:

The question of whether we could bear a redivision of Jerusalem is a searing and painful one. The Orthodox Union, National Council of Young Israel and a variety of other organizations, including Christian Evangelical ones, are calling upon their constituencies to join them in urging the Israeli government to refrain from any negotiation concerning the status of Jerusalem at all, when and if the Annapolis conference occurs. And last week, as I read one e-mail dispatch after another from these organizations, I became more and more convinced that I could not join their call.

It's not that I would want to see Jerusalem divided. It's rather that the time has come for honesty. Their call to handcuff the government of Israel in this way, their call to deprive it of this negotiating option, reveals that these organizations are not being honest about the situation that we are in, and how it came about. And I cannot support them in this.

These are extremely difficult thoughts for me to share, both because they concern an issue that is emotionally charged, and because people whose friendship I treasure will disagree strongly with me. And also because I am breaking a taboo within my community, the Orthodox Zionist community. "Jerusalem: Israel's Eternally Undivided Capital" is a 40-year old slogan that my community treats with biblical reverence. It is an article of faith, a corollary of the belief in the coming of the Messiah. It is not questioned. But this final reason why it is difficult for me to share these thoughts is also the very reason that I have decided to do so. This is a conversation that desperately needs to begin.

No peace conference between Israel and the Palestinians will ever produce anything positive until both sides have decided to read the story of the last 40 years honestly. On our side, this means being honest about the story of how Israel came to settle civilians in the territories it conquered in 1967, and about the outcomes that this story has generated.

An honest reading of this story reveals that there were voices in the inner circle of the Israeli government in 1967-1968 who warned that settling civilians in conquered territories was probably illegal under international law. But for very understandable reasons -- among them security needs, Zionist ideologies of both the both secular and religious varieties, memories that were 20 years old, and memories that were 3,000 years old -- these voices were overruled. We can identify with many of the ideas that carried the settlement project forward. But the fact remains that it is simply not honest on our part to pretend that the government of Israel didn't know that there was likely a legal problem, or that the government was confident that international conventions did not apply to this situation. That just wouldn't be an honest telling.

An honest reading of the story reveals that the heroes of Israel's wars who became the ministers in its government, who were most responsible for the initial decision to settle, were quite aware that by doing so they were risking conflict with the Arab population that was living there. They were aware that these Arabs would never be invited to become citizens of Israel, and would never have the rights of citizens. Nonetheless, they decided to go forward. Some believed that the economic benefit that would accrue to these Arabs as a result of their interactions with Israelis and Israel would be so great that they wouldn't mind our military and civilian presence among them. Others projected that some sort of diplomatic arrangement would soon be reached with Jordan that would soften the face of what would otherwise be full-blown military occupation. These may have been reasonable projections at the time. But as it turned out, both of them were wrong. And it's not honest to tell the story without acknowledging that we made these mistakes.

The Religious Zionist leadership (similar to today's Evangelical supporters of Israel) made a different judgment, namely that settling the Biblical heartland would further hasten the unfolding of the messianic age. Thus, the Arab population already there was not our problem. God would deal with it. This belief too -- reasonable though it may have seemed at the time -- has also turned out to be wrong. To tell the story honestly, this mistake too must be acknowledged.

And the difference that honest storytelling makes is enormous. When we tell our story honestly, our position at the negotiating table is one that is informed not only by our own needs and desires, but also by our obligations and responsibilities. The latter include the responsibility to -- in some way, in some measure -- fix that which we have done. Also included is the need to recognize that we have some kind of obligation toward the people who have been harmed by our decisions. Honesty in our telling of the story reveals the stark and candid reality that we also need to speak the language of compromise and conciliation. Not only the language of entitlement and demands.

To be sure, I would be horrified and sick if the worst-case division-of-Jerusalem scenario were to materialize. The possibility that the Kotel, the Jewish Quarter or the Temple Mount would return to their former states of Arab sovereignty is unfathomable to me, and I suspect to nearly everyone inside the Israeli government. At the same time though, to insist that the government not talk about Jerusalem at all (including the possibility, for example, of Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods) is to insist that Israel come to the negotiating table telling a dishonest story -- a story in which our side has made no mistakes and no miscalculations, a story in which there is no moral ambiguity in the way we have chosen to rule the people we conquered, a story in which we don't owe anything to anyone. Cries of protest, in particular from organizations that oppose Israel's relinquishing anything at all between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, and which have never offered any alternative solutions to the ones they are protesting against, are rooted in the refusal to read history honestly. And I -- for one -- cannot lend my support to that.

Without a doubt, the Palestinians aren't telling an honest story either. They are not being honest about their record of violence against Jews in the pre-State era, or about the obscene immorality with which they attacked Israeli civilians during the second intifada. They are not being honest about the ways in which their fellow Arabs are responsible for so much of the misery that they -- the Palestinians -- have endured, and they certainly are not being honest about the deep and real historical connection that the Jewish people has to this land and to this holy city. And there will not be peace (and perhaps there should be no peace conference) until they tell an honest story as well. But for us to take the approach that in order to defend and protect ourselves from their dishonest story, we must continue telling our own dishonest story, is to travel a road of unending and unendable conflict. Peace will come only when and if everyone at the table has the courage, the strength, and enough fear of God to tell the story as it really is.

For many decades we have sighed and asked, "When will peace come?" The answer is starkly simple. There will be peace the day after there is truth.

Rabbi Kanefsky says many right things, and he makes a few mistakes, to reach a very wrong conclusion.

He is entirely correct that there cannot be peace until there is truth. Unfortunately, he is not being entirely honest himself as he conflates the history of Jerusalem after 1967 with that of Judea and Samaria - the Israeli government annexed Jerusalem and did offer citizenship to all its Arab residents, so his arguments would be more powerful if he would only be referring to the rest of the West Bank and not Jerusalem.

His major mistakes, though, are not historical but tactical. His yearning for truth in negotiations may be admirable, but when one is in a situation where only one side is willing to tell the truth, it puts that side at an enormous disadvantage in a neutral forum.

I touched upon this point recently when I discussed the British commission of inquiry after the 1929 riots, where they listened to the Arab claims of ownership of the Western Wall and the Jewish claims that only God owns the wall - and they sided with the Arabs. The Jews could have made a compelling legal case for historic ownership of the entire Temple Mount but instead they told the truth. And in that forum, they lost.

Whenever third parties look at competing claims, they make the assumption that both claimants are fundamentally honest and that the truth is somewhere in between. When one side has no compunctions about lying, that side has a tremendous advantage over the side that is willing to admit mistakes. Honesty will be used against the truth-tellers.

Simply put, the Arab/Israeli conflict is a land dispute. If one side claims all the land and the other side equivocates about that question, naturally the side that claims it all is in a position of power.

This is not to say that Israel should lie. Its true claims are powerful enough, if they are not often stated as well as they should be. But this means that Israel should not negotiate by showing its hand as to what it is willing to give up - because these are essentially one-way negotiations, the question is how much land Israel will end up losing, and not what she will get in return because that is intangible (and almost certainly fantasy.) An "honest" negotiator will always lose because you will never find both sides putting on the table their final position.

Israel's legal, moral and historic claims to Jerusalem - and the entire West Bank as well - are very strong, but they have been given up by successive Israeli governments, in some part because of this desire for "honesty." Is Israel in better shape now than before Oslo? Is real peace any closer? Has Israel reaped rewards for its honest negotiations, which translates directly into capitulations?

It is unfortunate but becoming increasingly clear that "peace" is literally impossible with the current generation of Arabs. "Honesty," goodwill gestures, pleading, and the intense interest of most of the world has led to nothing. Israel's relative safety vis a vis its neighbors (as opposed to terror groups) is a result not of peaceful negotiations but because of Israel's success at war.

Sure Israel has made mistakes. No one should cover up errors or change history. But honesty has little to do with negotiations.

Kanefsky's major error is the assumption that both sides want peace and have the capability to deliver, and his advice (glowingly quoted in The Forward) is very, very wrong.

As usual, this is far from complete, and it is more to show how ignored the Qassam issue is rather than to show how many are being fired. Many Qassams never make it in the news, and the rare times that the IDF publishes statistics shows that I am usually undercounting by about 50%.

This list does not include mortars being shot from Gaza, which are usually 3-4 times higher on any given day.

The Islamic rulers of Gaza organized a collective wedding party Thursday for 100 couples, distributing almost a month's salary on grooms who celebrated without their brides in observance of Islamic law.

The party, sponsored by the head of the Hamas government, featured a band of drummers, Islamic songs and chocolate bars. About 2,000 relatives attended the party, including the brides, who sat in the audience.

"This is an Islamic wedding. The men are separated from the women," explained Ashraf al-Rifi of Hamas, who helped organize the party.

Despite economic sanctions imposed on Gaza, Hamas has been paying regular cash stipends and monthly allowances to supporters and workers, using money from smuggling and indirect aid.

The wedding party was the latest example. Each groom received a financial donation of $300 (€210), almost a month's salary in the impoverished territory.

The grooms, wearing green sashes with Hamas' name plastered on it, walked from the mosque nearby to the local park where the party was held. They then stood on a stage and swayed to the drumbeats. They were flanked by little girls dressed as brides.

This human interest article, almost as an aside, points out that Gaza's Hamas leaders give money to the people it likes - and doesn't help anyone else.

At the notorious Kitziot Prison, a real concentration camp minus gas chambers, crack Israeli soldiers have been ganging up on helpless and fettered Palestinian prisoners, shooting, beating and humiliating them under largely concocted pretexts....

The pogrom-like attack on the helpless Kitziot prisoners lasted for more than two hours as a huge cloud of smoke hovered over the area...

Another man, a plasterer, also unemployed because Israel won't allow raw materials, such as cement, into the Strip, insists on more daring language. "I don't know why the world doesn't call things by their real name. Here the Jews are starving us to death. Gaza is a large concentration camp. It is very much like Auschwitz. Yes, there are no gas chambers and crematoria. But people are dying for lack of food and lack of medicine.

The entire article is so riddled with lies and omissions that it is no wonder that Egyptians hate Jews and Israelis as much as they do - they are incited by pseudo-intellectual haters like this one.

Forgetting the absurd claims that Gaza is a death camp - at least that part is only quoted, not stated as fact (even though the headline screams "Much like Auschwitz") - even comparing Ketziot to a concentration camp is simply Jew-hating slander meant to incite. While Ketziot is no picnic, prisoners watch TV and get newspapers, and a large number of them smuggle in cell phones.

Not to mention that at Ketziot, a thousand prisoners rioted and burned down their own tents, which caused the "huge cloud of smoke" mentioned in the article.

Contrast this with Egypt, whose prisons are scenes of exceptional torture. A recent Al-Jazeera report on torture in Egyptian prisons resulted in Egypt arresting the female reporter and throwing her into one of them. A video of one Egyptian prisoner being sexually assaulted with a stick caused a brief flurry of news earlier this year, and Egyptian authorities regularly use electric shock against prisoners. In 2005, Egyptian police sexually assaulted women at a peaceful demonstration in broad daylight - and they were protesting Egyptian prison torture. Police who do manage to get tried for torture are routinely freed.

If one wanted to compare prisons to concentration camps, one would find that Egypt's prisons fit the definition much better.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.

Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.

The Syrians reported an attack by Israel in early September; the Israelis have not confirmed that. Senior Syrian officials continue to deny that a nuclear reactor was under construction, insisting that Israel hit a largely empty military warehouse.

But the images, federal and private analysts say, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, calling it a tacit admission of guilt.

“It’s a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow,” said a senior intelligence official. “It doesn’t lower suspicions, it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It’s incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away.”

Any attempt by Syrian authorities to clean up the site would make it difficult, if not impossible, for international weapons inspectors to determine that exact nature of the activity there. Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna have said they hoped to analyze the satellite images and ultimately inspect the site in person. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that released a report on the Syrian site earlier this week, said the expurgation of the building was inherently suspicious.

“It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity,” Mr. Albright said in an interview. “But it won’t work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing.”

Palestinian Authority officials here expressed concern on Wednesday over attempts by Hamas and other Palestinian radical groups to create a new PLO at a conference due to take place in Syria and the Gaza Strip early next month.

The officials told The Jerusalem Post that they were trying to persuade the Syrian government to ban the conference.

They called on the Arab countries and the US to join their efforts to thwart the planned conference.

The conference, which will bring together several Palestinian "rejectionist" groups, has been called in response to the US-sponsored peace conference, which is due to be held in Annapolis, Maryland, late this year. The conference will be held simultaneously in Damascus and Gaza City through a video-conference link.

"The conference in Damascus will deepen divisions among the Palestinians," warned a senior PA official. "This is the first time that several Palestinian factions are talking about the possibility of establishing an alternative to the PLO, which is still regarded by many Palestinians as their sole and legitimate representative."

In addition to the extremist groups, a number of prominent Palestinian figures have been invited to the conference in Syria, including estranged and veteran PLO leader Farouk Kaddoumi. The Tunisian-based Kaddoumi, who also serves as secretary-general of Fatah, is an outspoken critic of the Oslo Accords and the current PA leadership under Mahmoud Abbas.

Invitations issued by Hamas and its political allies described the Syria parley as the "Palestinian National Conference for Resisting Schemes Aimed at Liquidating the Palestinian Cause."

"Their declared goal is to foil the Annapolis conference," said another PA official. "What's worrying is that the conference will be held under the auspices of the Syrian regime, which is also unhappy with the US efforts to reach a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians."

Notice how the PA official accidentally acknowledges that the current PLO is only considered by "many" PalArabs as their representative, not "most."

Notice also how Hamas manages to set up video-conference links. They must really be starving!

Most of all, though, this is truly deja-vu from the original creation of the PLO:

As in 1964, this movement is not an indigenous Palestinian Arab movement but it sponsored by a separate Arab country (Egypt in 1964, Syria now.)

As in 1964, this new movement is not interested in an independent state but rather in destroying Israel and creating a pan-Arab or pan-Muslim nation-state. (The PLO version 1 didn't put a state in their platform until 1974 and that one was to replace Israel.)

Finally, as in 1964, this version of the PLO has one major political tactic: terrorism.

Four women were killed in the Palestinian territories this week in an apparent series of feminicides.

A young Palestinian man from the West Bank city of Qalqiliya was accused of killing his two sisters on Thursday. The bodies of Sima and Iyman Al-Adil were found in the family's home Thursday afternoon.

Eyewitnesses said the two women appeared to have been shot. The motive behind the killings is unclear.

The Palestinian General Intelligence Service announced the suspected murderer admitted to killing his sisters after he was arrested. The suspect said his motivation was to protect so-called "family dignity."

Separately, Palestinian medical officials in Gaza City discovered the body of a female university student near Salah Addin Street Thursday.

The officials said the woman, the daughter of a university professor, had disappeared three days ago. They said the woman had been shot several times.

Iyhab Al-Ghussain, a spokesperson for the de facto Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip, said the security forces are investigating the apparent killing.

Also on Thursday Palestinian security forces in Qalqiliya announced the arrest of suspects in the apparent killing of a twenty-nine-year-old woman named Wafa Wahdan, who was found dead on Monday near a landfill.

I already had reported on the last woman, so the Palestinian Arab self-death count for the year has now climbed to 561, with 37 of them being women and 40 dead children.

Since Israel changed Gaza's status, it has blocked the shipment of certain merchandise into the Strip, including cigarettes, electric appliances, furniture, and toys. After Gaza-based terrorist groups tried to hide potassium for use in explosives in sacks of sugar, Israeli authorities also started inspecting sugar being brought to Gaza.

Do you think that the pro-terror crowd will mention that when they whine about Israeli restrictions on goods to Gaza?

Police have arrested a suspect and charged him with attempted murder of an Orthodox rabbi and schoolteacher, who was viciously beaten with an aluminum baseball bat the night of Oct. 9 while walking to synagogue to pray.

Lee Tucker, 37, of Ventura Drive is charged in the attack on Rabbi Mordechai Moskowitz, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon. Tucker was being held at the Ocean County Jail, Toms River, on $375,000 bail, Detective Lt. Joseph Isnardi said.

Tucker was arrested Wednesday afternoon near the Lakewood Community Center, about eight blocks from Princeton Avenue and Carey Street, where the attack occurred.

Moskowitz, 53, of Lakewood, is a third-grade teacher at Lakewood Cheder School, Detective Steve Wexler said. He remains hospitalized in a rehabilitation center for injuries to his face and head.

Moskowitz's nephew, Moshe Rothberg of Lakewood, called the arrest like having a huge weight lifted from the family. Rothberg said the attack had taken a terrible toll on the family, and speculation that it was a bias attack made dealing with it even more difficult.

"We were focusing on him getting better," Rothberg said. "The last thing we wanted it to be was bias. You don't want to think that someone has so much hate that they would do that."

Police had said from the start that they did not believe the attack to be based on bias, although they have not established what the motive might have been, Isnardi said.

Rothberg praised the Police Department and particularly Chief Robert C. Lawson, who worked with the family, assuring them that detectives would solve the crime, Rothberg said.

"He answered every question and had said he strongly believed it was not a bias incident," Rothberg said of Lawson. "The detectives were working double shifts, and now we can finally rest. They went way beyond the call of duty."

Police developed additional leads on Tucker after the Vaad — Lakewood's Council of Orthodox Leaders — and the Anti-Defamation League offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, Isnardi said. People came forward with pieces of information, Isnardi said.

Sometimes it appears that people bend over backwards to deny bias - not because of the facts but because they don't want to deal with the reaction.As I mentioned previously, one news outlet reported that the attacker was yelling "Jew! Jew!" during the attack. And, interestingly, the Asbury Press article declines to identify the race of the accused attacker - a somewhat relevant fact if it was a bias crime. (He is black.)

Yet another prominent Palestinian Muslim (probably the same as in this Arabic article from yesterday) is claiming that there was never a Temple on the Temple Mount, and that Jews should not be allowed to worship at the Kotel:

The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque.

"There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple," he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. "Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."

Sabri rejected Judaism's claim to the Western Wall as part of the outer wall of the Second Temple.

"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque," he said. "There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews."

Asked if Jews would ever be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount under Muslim control, he replied: "It is not the Temple Mount, you must say Al-Aksa. And no Jews have the right to pray at the mosque. It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area. No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aksa. Everyone knows that."

"Zionism tries to trick the Jews claiming that this was part of a Jewish temple, but they dug there and they found nothing," Sabri added.

Notice the typical Muslim extremist "logic" - that if you want "peace" you must allow Muslims to take over everything. "Everyone knows that."

I have put here some of the "nothing" found there - Hebrew letters spelling "To the house of the (shofar) blast to..." Josephus wrote that a Kohen would blow the shofar from on top of the Temple every Friday afternoon to announce the coming of the Sabbath, and every Saturday night to announce that the Sabbath was over, and he did this from a high wall of the Temple Mount enclosure in order for most of Jerusalem to hear.

The famous Guggenheim Museum in New York has a blog that says it "tells the Guggenheim’s evolving story, and offers insights on vis...

Hasbys!

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